Be Careful Chapter 9-5
'9-5 Interlude Spark Of Gold' ---- Author's Notes: This isn't an update per say. It is more of an omake I came up with while struggling with the choreography of the Danmaku battle between Yuka and Cirno. It pretty much explains the origin of Master Spark and Yuka's beloved parasol. No, this is not canon in any sense of the word, it is just something I wanted to share but really didn't fit with the next chapter if I added it in the actual update. So, here it is! Please enjoy. ---- '9-5 Interlude Spark Of Gold' 'Master Spark' It was the very first magic spell I had ever created, though it would not be named for a few more centuries. Well, no. Calling it a spell would have been a bit of a stretch back then. I was simply dabbling with power I had no knowledge off when I first came up with it. I did not have the finesse nor the wisdom I have now so, when I discovered the power of magic, I simply gathered as much of it as I could before releasing it and watched what happened. The result was a ray of light that cut through everything like a sword from heaven. It was then that I decided that I liked that spell. I used to simply use my hands to focus the power and release it, gathering as much of it within my grasp and directing the resulting beam of light at my intended target. That did not pan out as well as I had hoped since I was roasting my hands every time I did it that way, rendering me unable to go to hand to hand combat as effectively as I wanted and limiting me to only one shot. Since then, I tried out various other objects to use as a foci for the Master Spark. Unfortunately, they all ended up as being inadequate in one way or another and bringing me back to square one. That was until I met her. She was a strange one, I'll admit that. A beautiful woman with hair of gold, a human, who wasn't afraid of youkai. A woman that radiated a kind of power that I have never felt before in golden light. She simply walked up to me and asked what was wrong? I had been so frustrated at all my failures that I simply vented everything on her. The woman stood there in silence while twirling her white parasol as she listened, her brown dress laced with gold making her look like a giant doll. After I finished, she started giggling before breaking out into a full cackle. I felt insulted at the woman's reaction and called out rose vines to restrain her, the woman stopped cackling when she found herself caught with my vines. I gave her a vicious smile before setting up a Master Spark. I cackled back at her as I released the energy gathered within my hands, one shot or not, only one should have been enough to vaporize that arrogant woman. My eyes went wide when the woman gave me an equally vicious smile before her entire body suddenly broke down into countless butterflies made of golden light. The golden butterflies dispersed and flew all around me. I tried to aim the Master Spark at them but they were too fast and they simply kept evading the death ray until it ran out of power. I gazed at my hands and confirmed that they were once again burned to a crisp and would take hours to fully heal. The butterflies converged together and combined, once again turning into the woman. I asked her who she was and how she was able to do that. She smiled at me and only said that it was because of magic. I asked her what her name was and she responded my asking me if my hands were okay. I snarled at her and asked her who she was one more time before I charged at her, trying to deliver a shoulder tackle. I should have known better really. The woman merely turned into butterflies once again and I ended up eating dirt when I lost my balance and tripping on a rock. I stood back up, ignoring the pain coming from my hands, before asking for the woman's name one more time. She smiled at me, opened her mouth, and told me her name. It wasn't anything special or spectacular, a rather ordinary name when I think about it now. I then asked her what she was, reasoning that no human should be able to do what she did. The woman blinked at me a few times before she started cackling once again, I waited for her to finish and got my answer. The Golden Witch I asked her what she was doing in Gensokyo and she told me that she was looking for someone, a man most dear to her. They were separated because of a certain event that occurred in their home realm and she said that she was trying to find him through the sea of countless possibilities, a kaleidoscope of different realms and fragments of worlds. Back then I didn't believe her, only commenting that it would be impossible to be able to find one person in all of that. I told her straight to her face that there was a zero percent chance for her to be able to find that man, that it would take a miracle for that to happen. She simply smiled at me and told me that she would try anyway, and that it wouldn't be the first time she had to go against certainty to find her miracle. She sounded so certain that she would be reunited with that person that I was starting to root for her so I asked her why she was so confident about it. She simply shrugged and looked up at the endless sky and said: After all...without love, the truth cannot be seen. The woman switched the topic back to my problem. I can gather energy and direct it just fine, it was just that I kept destroying whatever I focus the power into whenever I try. She thought about it for a moment before snapping her fingers, her expression had the word 'Eureka' written all over it. The woman closed her white parasol before giving the object to me. I looked it over and said that it was a very pretty parasol, which it was. The Golden Witch smiled at my words and told me to try to use to cast a Master Spark using her parasol. I looked at her like she just turned into a giant two-headed snail before asking her is she was insane. She giggled softly and answered 'once upon a time' before asking me to do a Master Spark with her parasol again. I asked her if she was sure about this and she confidently nodded. I muttered an apology to her parasol before pointing the tip at a boulder in the distance. I started gathering energy just like normal and I noticed that it was easier this time, I was able to gather energy faster and more smoothly. I was about to stop when I felt that I was reaching the amount that I normally considered as the limit for gathered energy but I noticed that the parasol seemed like it could still hold more. I bit my bottom lip and decided to risk it. I poured as much power into the parasol as I could until I felt it fill up, opening like a blooming flower as it reached its limit. I felt my heart race in anticipation as I carefully aimed the parasol before releasing all the energy built up at once. I wished that I had picked a larger target. The boulder, which was around the size of a small shack, was erased from existence along with a nice chunk of the forest behind it. I looked at the resulting damage from the Master Spark, then back at the woman's parasol, then back at the damage caused by my spell, then I smiled like I was the happiest girl in the world. I turned back to the woman and pointed at the effect of my spell and held up her parasol to show her that it was fine. The woman nodded sagely and explained the reason why I had all that trouble in casting that particular spell. It turned out that I wasn't actually casting a magic spell whenever I used Master Spark. Instead, I was simply clumping energy together and pointing it at someone I didn't like before releasing the gathered energy. The problem with that was there wasn't anything regulating the energy while being gathered or released. The reason why everything I have used to focus that energy gets destroyed was because they keep getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of power I was forcing into them. The Golden Witch's parasol was different. She said that it was created using powerful magic to be used specifically as a foci for magical energy, regardless of type of magical energy used. As an added bonus, it also meant that it can take the stress of being filled up with a lot of energy, meaning that it was physically more durable than any parasol ever made. I simply stared at the object in sheer awe. Who would have ever thought that such a simple object could be used in such a way? The Golden Witch laughed at my reaction to how I was creating my Master Sparks and what her parasol does. She may have done it on a whim. She may have done it because she no longer had use for it. She may have done it because she had taken a shine to me. She may have done it because, somehow, someway, she knew that I will need it someday. Regardless, when I tried to give her parasol back, the simply shook her head and told me to keep it. I was stunned and confused as to why she would try to part with such a useful artifact. She simply said that it suited me and made me promise to take good care of it. I promised her and she said goodbye before vanishing in a whirlwind of golden butterflies. That was the last time I ever saw her. Zero no Tsukaima Fanon < Top Of Page > Table Content Chapter 9 School << >> Chapter 10 Be Careful What You Wish For Category:Chapters